


And If You Say Run (I'll Run With You)

by SleepsWithCoyotes



Series: Serious Moonlight [1]
Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Dancing, M/M, Tentacle Monsters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-12
Updated: 2016-03-12
Packaged: 2018-05-26 04:49:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6224617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SleepsWithCoyotes/pseuds/SleepsWithCoyotes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cecil is multilingual.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And If You Say Run (I'll Run With You)

**Author's Note:**

> Archiving old fic from 2013 - I actually haven't listened since ep 33, from the looks of things, so everything I post will likely be terribly non-canon-compliant. No comment spoilers, please--I do intend to get caught up!
> 
> I tend to picture Microphone as the [third from the left](http://www.puppiesandflowers.com/blogimages/july07/micDeco.jpg) here, and yes, that will be important for the next fic. XD

Carlos pockets his car keys as he walks toward the station's front entry, glancing at the lengthening shadows cast by the hedges lining the pitted brick walls. Only a few of the shadows move out of time with the others, and he nods surreptitiously to the officer on watch while stepping carefully over the jittery patch of shade that looks like a grasping hand.

Though the station is on-air all through the night, the staff locks the doors after five. Station policy, Cecil has told him before, apologetic that Carlos had been left waiting until Cecil, temporarily between interns, could cut to a pre-recorded segment. He'd been horrified when Carlos suggested that the locked door must cut down on impromptu parties amongst the late-night DJs.

Carlos knocks, but it's just a formality; he's parked on the street right outside Cecil's studio window, and the intern who opens the door looks just slightly breathless, as if she's been ordered to run.

"Hello!" she says brightly, stepping aside though they've never seen each other before. Guilt does a slow roll in the pit of Carlos' stomach as he realizes he hasn't heard her name yet and isn't sure he can quite afford the optimism of learning it. "Come in, please! You must be Carlos."

He doesn't throw off a joking 'if I must' to set her at ease. He's tried that exactly once. It hadn't ended well. He nods instead and doesn't flinch when her beaming smile amps up another fifty watts, possibly literally.

Her name, he learns, is Intern Millie, and she loves working at the station. It's her _dream job._ As in she spent a year suffering through recurring nightmares of running through half-lit corridors, clutching in one hand a piece of paper closely printed with smeared, blurry words she couldn't read but knew were desperately important, chased all the while by the glutinous tread of some unseen horror. In the last dream she'd burst into Cecil's recording booth just moments before he went on air, internship application in hand, only to wake to find herself in Cecil's recording booth just moments before he went on air, internship application in hand.

"And I've gotten really good at the switchboard now," she tells him over coffee in the break room as they wait for Cecil to cut to the weather. "The first time I had to juggle two callers at once, I thought I was going to _die,_ but then Cecil showed me a few tricks that worked like a charm!"

He doesn't remind her that the station doesn't have a phone or ask to see the charm in question. He _is_ about to ask for a refill on his coffee, but just then the very air vibrates with a tearing sound half screech and half roar. The linoleum under Carlos' feet shakes and the cheap break room clock falls off the wall with a clatter, but he and Millie hold their coffee mugs steady until the roaring stops. One tiny part of Carlos is absurdly pleased to have acclimated to such a degree.

Millie's staring eyes and near-bloodless face curdles even that small pleasure.

"Excuse me," she says with a wide, false smile as she rises. "I should go see what Station Management wants."

Carlos jumps to his feet. Even he knows this is bad. Very bad. "Wait," he says, patting himself down helplessly, but he hasn't even brought a petri dish with him, much less a death ray. He _really_ needs to get back to work on those schematics. "I--"

Millie reaches into her pocket. "Nothing to worry about," she says cheerfully, stepping closer in such a way that her slight body shields their hands from the view of the camera planted in the coffee maker. "It's my job."

She presses something cool and jagged into his hand, mouthing 'just in case' and giving him a long, steady look until he nods. The thing jingles when he drops it into his pocket, waking a hopeful suspicion in the back of his thoughts, but now isn't the time to ask questions.

He follows her out into the hall but turns right when she goes left. Through the window of the recording booth, he sees Cecil hunched over his microphone, both hands gripping tightly to his headphones, lips drawn back from his teeth in a shaky, insincere grin. Though the booth is supposed to be soundproofed, Cecil flinches along with Carlos as the door to Management's office bursts open and hits the wall with a bang. Millie doesn't even scream.

Carlos waits a few moments, but he knows she isn't coming back. He's on the verge of walking down there himself when Cecil cuts to the weather and charges out of the booth, not meeting Carlos' eyes. "Stay!" Cecil snaps when Carlos makes to follow him, and only the thin edge of terror in Cecil's voice convinces Carlos to do as he's told. Cecil's panic is all for Carlos, like he just might break if Carlos gives him one more thing to fear.

When Cecil returns, he has an envelope clutched in one trembling hand. Carlos has heard him mention them before, has always imagined something businesslike, but the envelope has the heavy, textured look of intimidatingly good cardstock, though it's the greasy color of half-dry bones.

"Ah," Cecil says with a touch of chagrin as he glances over a sheet of heavy vellum. "Apparently I'm not supposed to mention our neighbors on Proxima Centauri. Sports rivalry," he adds with an understanding sigh.

Once Carlos would have protested that explanation, first because of the absurdity of the claim, later because someone had died over something so ridiculous. Now he sticks close until the broadcast is over and takes Cecil to a quiet little café he's found, insisting on keeping their date because Cecil doesn't want to be alone.

He doesn't look at what Millie handed him until he's safely back home, and gratitude nearly turns him inside out.

He has her keys to the station, and all things considered, no one will ever miss them.

***

Despite having the keys, Carlos makes a point of never using the keys, not unless he has to. Millie had seemed to think it should be kept secret, which means Cecil will be the first suspect if anyone realizes Carlos has his own set. He can usually rely on the interns to let him in anyway those times he can't get to the station before five, and when worse comes to worst, he has other options.

"Oh," he says sadly, standing at the station door with a drink carrier balanced in each hand. One holds two coffees and a bag of the pastries Cecil likes. The second is his secret knock. "I forgot we're between interns. Now I have this extra triple-pump mocha and hazelnut biscotti with no hands to--"

"Let me help you with that," the officer on duty offers, stepping out from the bushes to unlock the door. Of course they all have keys; Carlos isn't surprised.

"Why, thank you, officer," Carlos says with a smile. "If you could just hold this for a moment...?"

He hands off the second drink carrier and reaches to open the door, stepping inside without looking back. He has no idea whether Cecil would be proud of him for subverting the Sheriff's Secret Police or would merely be pleased that he's fitting in so well, and he has no intention of asking. If it turns out he's risking reeducation, he'd rather Cecil didn't worry.

It's not as if he intends to stop.

There wasn't room on the street to park out in front of the station this time, and he doubts Cecil is expecting him. The broadcast has been mostly human interest stories tonight, and the city has been so quiet that Carlos has run out of new data to gather. With nothing to do but wait for several experiments to run their course, surprising his boyfriend with coffee is genuinely the most productive use of his time he can think of for the moment.

The station always seems just slightly forlorn without an intern bustling around to gush over Cecil or compliment Carlos' hair. He's fairly certain the compliments are nothing but a show of loyalty; it's statistically impossible for an entire town to be so taken with such an average feature. It isn't as if he needs a guide--he could find his way to the booth blindfolded by now--but it's nice to have someone to talk to while he waits for Cecil to finish the show, even if he rarely finds himself talking to the same person two months in a row. He's learned to appreciate the time he's given.

There are speakers everywhere inside the station, even in the men's bathroom, so he knows that Cecil has already gone to the weather before he even reaches the booth. He suspects Cecil has been informed somehow of his arrival, but as he approaches the booth, he finds himself hastily revising that theory. Cecil...Cecil is...Cecil _must_ think himself alone in the building, maybe in all the universe.

Because Cecil is _dancing._

Carlos has been to clubs. He's had roommates. He's seen people dance in public and in private, people who thought they were grace personified and others too embarrassed to lift their shuffling feet. He's never seen anyone dance like Cecil: eyes closed, smiling dreamily as he sways his hips to the beat, lanky arms and legs moving with thoughtless confidence. There's something utterly unself-conscious in the sinuous flex of his spine, the drift and snap of his limbs, and Carlos is reminded unexpectedly of a summer he'd spent being dragged to Native American ceremonies and revival tents and the occasional rave by an anthropology major doing a paper on trance states in ecstatic dancers. _Erzulie,_ Carlos thinks, mouth dry, hands nearly forgetting their hold on the offering he's brought, only if any spirit is riding Cecil, it must be the music itself.

The roll of Cecil's hips does alarming things to Carlos' pulse, but what keeps him staring is Cecil's sweet little smile. He's seen Cecil happy before--overjoyed, even--but the last time he'd seen Cecil this perfectly content, Cecil's head had been tucked against Carlos' shoulder as they sat on the trunk of his car in the Arby's parking lot. His sometimes-awkward, often-uncertain boyfriend dances like it's his native state, and Carlos is breathless just watching him.

Which all ends abruptly as the music's beat slows, and Cecil, half-turned towards the door, opens his eyes and promptly freezes like a deer caught in a house-hunter's headlights. He looks like he wants to hide, face going a painful red, and Carlos' admiration is lost abruptly to dismay. Does Cecil honestly not know what he looks like when he dances?

The weather seems like it's winding down, and Carlos knows he has to act fast. Slipping into the sound booth, he sets the almost-forgotten drink carrier on a low, cluttered shelf by the door and heads right for Cecil. He ignores the mortified babbling and even the way Cecil backs up a step in favor of reaching up to gently cradle Cecil's face to hold him still.

He presses his lips to Cecil's forehead, because he wouldn't dream of trying to shut Cecil up, even if he's spouting complete nonsense. The cringing stream of self-deprecation slows anyway as Carlos kisses the high arch of a cheekbone next, nuzzles the short, stiff bristles of Cecil's neatly-trimmed sideburns, and murmurs into his ear, "That was amazing. Dance for me again?"

Hands grip Carlos' biceps tightly as Cecil sways towards him, shivering as if his knees are about to give way, and though Cecil muffles an embarrassed squeak against Carlos' shoulder, he doesn't say no.

It's a good thing that none of the experiments waiting back at the lab need to be checked on before morning, because Carlos only has eyes for Cecil, and he intends to make his observations count.

***

Carlos runs for his life the way he does most things: with single-minded purpose while still thinking five steps ahead. From behind him the squeal of shredding metal echoes up the street, patrol car sirens popping suddenly into strange octaves as sound waves distort like heat mirages before being silenced. The arrhythmic crack of small-arms fire drowns out the frantic chanting that trails the line of destruction, but for once Carlos isn't the least bit curious what the chanters are saying. He's not sure the creature that... _manifested_ in the middle of downtown Night Vale can even hear them considering the effects it has on sound.

What he does know is this: the creature is massive, is possessed of a frightening number of tentacles he finds entirely too familiar, and it's on a direct course for the radio station.

The shadows outside the station are still in the gathering dusk, even the wicked, grasping hand curled up and shaking under a bush. The deputy who usually watches--Cecil or the station; Carlos has never been entirely certain--is nowhere to be found, but from the sheer number of deputies flinging themselves in front of that darkly glistening mass of teeth and eyes and snaking limbs, every unit that can be spared have left their usual posts to respond to the invader.

Carlos pounds on the station door, but no one answers. And damn it, there _should_ be an intern on duty tonight, but when he stops, the flat of his fist still pressed to the door, he feels a subtle vibration running through the reinforced steel. That thing behind him, looming even now over the tops of the squat houses and small businesses that dot this side of town--something in the blind imperiousness of its flailing limbs reminds him of snatched glimpses of Station Management seen through the frosted glass of their door. If they're aware of the intruder, they might not be happy, might even have set up enough of a fuss for an intern to make the fearful pilgrimage to their door to find out what they want.

Carlos fumbles for the keys. The sound of gunfire is growing louder; so are the screams.

Only the emergency lights are on inside the station, but that doesn't seem to be affecting Cecil's broadcast. Carlos can still hear him over the speakers that line the halls, his soothing voice dropped to a trembling hush.

_"...advise that you remain calm,"_ he's saying as Carlos tears down the half-lit corridors. _"The Night Vale tourism board, while claiming no responsibility for this matter, would also like to point out that our guest constitutes irrefutable proof that the "Visitable Night Vale" campaign has been a roaring success. I'd also like to take a moment to extend condolences to the family of Intern Horace, three times winner of the annual Ritual Bake-Off and Vocal Revue. Sadly, having joined the brave chanters on the welcoming committee just now, Intern Horace was crushed by a falling police cruiser in the middle of a masterful solo. He will be missed."_

Though he flinches violently when an unearthly shriek echoes through Management's closed door, Cecil is still sitting in his chair and not under the desk when Carlos makes it to the sound booth. Carlos bursts in without slowing, and he hopes he hasn't _really_ taken a year off Cecil's life, because that's what the man looks like when he whips around, pale eyes wide and shocked.

"Uh, listeners," Cecil says automatically, "you'll never guess who just joined me in the studio--"

"Cecil," Carlos interrupts, "we need to evacuate the station."

"But Carlos," Cecil begins with a smile more startled than amused. "I can't just--"

"Our 'visitor' is heading straight for us," Carlos says as he strides to Cecil's side. "Considering its resemblance to--" Another roar cuts him off, the building shaking around them as something massive slams against the wall from inside Management's office, and Carlos nods meaningfully at Cecil's uncertain frown. "I think it's coming here for a reason."

Cecil's teeth score his lower lip. "Well," he says with strained cheer, "I've never covered a family reunion before, but--"

Carlos reaches for the mic.

He hears Cecil cry a warning just before his fingers curl around the stem, is jostled as Cecil tries to throw himself between them, but he snatches the thing off the desk before Cecil can stop him. It's an old model, crafted in a style his mother would have called Art Deco, heavy enough for its freestanding base to be solid steel. It feels strange in his hand, neither metallic-cool nor electric-hot. It's warm, he decides in the instant before everything goes strange, warm as skin or flesh or blood. 

Things...flicker as his hand tightens on the stem, but Cecil's panicked eyes and gaping, silent mouth are more worrisome than the clots of shadow crawling from the edges of his vision into the light. He feels stretched, as if the particles that make up his physical being are being pulled slowly through a singularity, but at the same time he feels monstrously bloated, as if some part of him is expanding on another plane, more rapidly than his limited consciousness can fully comprehend. It lasts barely an instant, but as he staggers away from the desk, still clutching the microphone, he understands how to get Cecil out of the building.

"Come on," he says, backing for the door, mic tipped in Cecil's direction even as he curls his fingers tighter. "We'll do this live."

Cecil stares at him like he's done something impossible but rises all the same, following Carlos out into the hall step by uncertain step. The microphone's cord trails after them in a lax curl, never pulling taut, though it twitches like a startled snake as Management's raspy howl thunders through the halls. Gathering his composure as his shoulders uncurl from their reflexive hunch, Cecil drones a running commentary into the mic but doesn't try to wrest it back from Carlos. The trust in his eyes makes Carlos swallow hard, swear silently to himself not to fuck this up.

Outside the sun hangs stubbornly in the sky, low on the horizon but five minutes past its scheduled time of setting. Sirens wail in the distance, but the Sheriff's Secret Police hang back as the mammoth creature glides slickly towards the station, barely a block away and closing fast. Looking at it directly drives an aching spike through the center of Carlos' head, his eyes watering as their focus shifts rapidly between far and near though what he's looking at is _right there._ If the creature has a true body, he can't tell through the mass of tentacles that bristle from it on every side; neither can he find anything resembling ears or a mouth, though it has eyes and teeth in plenty. The teeth just don't seem to _go_ anywhere.

The nearly overwhelming urge to vomit is mostly due to vertigo, not disgust, but he doubts it would go over well just the same.

Slinking closer with the alien grace of an octopus in its element, the thing drifts to a halt half a block away, myriad eyes in a bewildering range of colors staring balefully down at them. The creature pulses gently as its vast bulk expands and contracts in a way that makes Carlos think of a beating heart, breathing lungs. As alien as it looks, it seems to be fully corporeal, its body following an organization Carlos understands. Perhaps it has some concept of language as well.

"Hello?" he shouts up at it, taking its hesitation to strike in the face of nonresistance as a positive sign.

He's still holding the mic tipped towards Cecil, but his hand has dropped a little, distracted. Cecil has to lean down to murmur, "Brave Carlos is attempting to communicate with our guest, but--oh, dear...."

The thing narrows its eyes at him, vestigial lips curling into a sneer over bared teeth. It is utterly, intimidatingly silent.

When it whips several tentacles around, Carlos is certain they're done for, but the heavy, tree-trunk limbs pull up, writhing sinuously aloft instead of crashing down on them to smear them to paste. Their sway is hypnotic, pulling at Carlos' attention even as his brain tries to curl up in a sobbing ball inside his skull. For some reason, clutching Cecil's microphone more tightly seems to help.

He jumps at Cecil's abrupt, "Huh," and when he looks over, he finds Cecil staring up at the mass with a puzzled frown, hands braced thoughtfully on his hips. He doesn't seem to be having the same problems Carlos is, standing firm while Carlos tries not to weave drunkenly in place.

"Cecil?" Carlos asks, his head threatening to split at the sound of his own voice.

Cecil shakes his head, still frowning, but says, "I think I've got it."

He steps forward then and--to say he raises an arm is to say the Golden Ratio is sort of interesting. It's _elegant,_ a smooth arc up with a sudden, sinuous twist of wrist and hand at the end, and when Cecil's motion pauses, so does the creature's.

The two look at each other for an endless moment, and then the thing is moving again, its many arms drifting more complacently now: a native speaker enunciating slowly for the well-meaning foreigner who's trying _so hard._ Cecil nods to himself, as if he's picking up a soundless beat no one else can hear, and then he executes a full-body writhe that nearly makes Carlos drop the microphone.

From the surprised way the creature knots its limbs together, Carlos suspects Cecil is accent-perfect.

The microphone squeals a reproachful burst of feedback as he fumbles it, which embarrasses him so much he jerks it up to his face to babble an apology. "Uh, sorry about that, er...listeners. This is Carlos, speaking for Cecil, who has engaged the--ah, _visitor_ in a two-way dialog through the medium of...dance." He feels slightly ridiculous calling it that; what Cecil is doing has evolved far beyond anything he's seen in any club or on any stage. He wishes he had the language to describe it, but he suspects he'd need to be as flexible as Cecil to even approximate it.

Cecil, he can't help noticing, is very flexible indeed.

Someone hands him a piece of paper, coughing meaningfully when he begins to skim its contents silently to himself.

"Uh...I've just been handed a note saying that the City Council, in spite of the failed measure to adopt dance as the town's official language, has come to an agreement with the school board to add it to the K-12 curriculum as a language elective. In light of the distressing lack of linguistic diversity in the community, these courses will be mandatory for all students."

What hits him then isn't the contradiction implied in the definition of 'elective.' It's that he remembers when that measure first came up. He'd thought it yet another example of Night Vale's occasional fights of absurdity, dangerous mostly because it was just outlandish enough to pass, and he'd worried for weeks about what that would do to the town's infrastructure. He'd thought the City Council criminally out of touch with reality, had nearly been moved to write them a letter, but the one thing he had _not_ taken into account was the then-creeping suspicion that the council was not, in fact, actually human. Or the growing realization that a disproportionate number of the town's most important figures likely weren't either. Or that from a certain non-species-biased point of view, their proposal might have made all the sense in the world.

He has no idea what Cecil is saying to the creature, but when Cecil turns back with a brilliant smile, he can only assume things are going well.

"Good news, listeners!" Cecil announces, leaning into the mic. His fingers brush Carlos' aching knuckles as he pulls the microphone closer, but the adoring look he's giving Carlos suggests that Cecil is happy with things as they stand. Carlos is sure he'll be hearing Cecil gush about doing _Radio_ together for weeks, but he finds he doesn't mind. "Apparently our visitor is only here to settle a bet. Due to a crushing defeat on the fields of valor--much like the Night Vale Scorpions' brutal domination of their Desert Bluffs rivals, for those of you who attended last week's game--the souls of the losing team are now property of our very own Station Management. Let's give them all a big hand for such a touching display of sportsmanship in this--"

Carlos doesn't stop to think. Hauling Cecil close to his body, he whips them both around and tackles Cecil to the ground, covering him as best as he can as time and space warp visibly around the visiting creature's slowly-gaping maw. From the corner of his eye, Carlos sees the swirling gas plumes of nebulae billowing like smoke in the center of that widening mouth, flickering as ragged, black shapes come streaming out of a vortex lined with mutely writhing tongues. The tattered shadows wail with a burning-air shriek as they're spat out over the darkening street, swooping low as they rocket, one by one, through the still-open station door.

It slams shut behind them, and the microphone writhes like a live thing in Carlos' hand, its cord pinched tightly in the doorframe.

Cecil squeaks, rolling Carlos off him with a tragic expression, like it's the last thing in the world he wants to do, scrambling to throw the door back open while Carlos tries his best to keep hold of the mic. Something tells him letting it go just now would be a very bad thing, that the only reason his mind is coping as well as it is with all he's just seen is because he's currently operating on more planes than he's used to and consequently has more _room_ for it all.

As Cecil yanks the door back open, dropping to his knees to cradle the poor, crimped cord in both hands, the microphone goes limp and inert. At the same time the vast, black creature looming over the street inverts itself, limbs and eyes and bristling teeth sucked into the yawning hole of its mouth and winking out of existence. That the entire process is accomplished in absolute silence is somehow more deafening than any howl of cosmic winds or eldritch shrieking could ever be.

"Um," Carlos says, breathless for reasons he can't explain. "If you can hear me, Night Vale," and he's not sure they can until he hears a faint echo of his own tinny voice somewhere down the street, "the...visitor has vanished, presumably returned to its own dimension or quadrant of space. Or time," he says, picking himself up slowly. "I believe tests would be...inconclusive. I now return you to your regular announcer," he adds, limping over to Cecil. His right knee and left palm are skinned from pulling Cecil to the ground, but it's worth it. All of it.

"Thank you, Carlos," Cecil says in his radio voice, still on his knees, hand tangling with Carlos' own around the microphone's stem and not letting go. For a moment he thinks he can see _into_ Cecil, so startlingly normal on the surface and perfectly infinite on the inside, and he wonders if this is what the world looks like to Cecil all the time. If it's the sort of thing that love at first sight is made of. "And now, dear listeners, let us go to...the weather."

There's no one in the booth, no interns emerging hesitantly from under tables and desks, but as the sun sinks finally below the peaked roofs and Cecil leans up to kiss him, from the speakers inside the station, Carlos swears he can hear music.

**Author's Note:**

> You're welcome to imagine the weather Cecil was rocking out to as anything you like, but I personally had [this](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnnuGZ3QKgM) in mind. ♥


End file.
